The Shasta Courier

INDIAN AFFAIRS

The permanent residents and most thoughtful portion of the people of this section of the State, have long felt that the establishment of an Indian Reservation, somewhere in this county, was a matter of great necessity, and a measure required, not only for the protection of the Indians, but for the security of the lives and property of the white population. In the section of country comprising a portion of the counties of Siskiyou, Shasta, Lassen and Tehama—a territory embracing many thousand square miles, are to be found the following tribes of Indians:—Shastas, Pit Rivers, Hat Creeks, Pusbus, Piutes, Antelopes, Nosers, Sacramentos, Tonatons and McClouds, numbering, in the aggregate, over two thousand men, women and children, who have not been provided for or taken in charge by the Indian Department of the Government. The valleys and fisheries from which these Indians formerly procured their sustenance are now taken from them and appropriated to the use of white settlers, and they are driven from their former homes and hunting grounds, into the mountains, where they can obtain but a scanty subsistence. The consequence is that the Indians regard the white settlers as trespassers and enemies, and steal, burn and destroy their property, and murder women and children when a safe and favorable opportunity occurs; and the whites, in order to punish the authors of these outrages, make counter raids upon the Indians, thereby keeping up a constant and destructive warfare. This state of affairs renders it unsafe for the settlers and their families, and frequently many Indians who are not bad and vicious have to suffer with those who commit depredations and murders. Nothing is done for these Indian tribes by the Indian Department, and it is nothing more than right and just that the Government should intervene for their protection and that of the settlers, and a Reservation be provided for the Indians as a home. Such a measure would be nothing more than simple justice, and would serve as a protection to the white settlers.